The much-loved Roebuck on Richmond Hill had been lovingly reclaimed, restored and elevated by the Greene King group, and reopened with a brand-new, more premium proposition. Everything from the food and drinks menu to the décor and the service had had a thoughtful and beautiful facelift, offering existing and new customers the ultimate quintessential British pub experience.
We set about planning and delivering our social-first campaign for the pub relaunch, aimed at boosting engagement among loyal customers, increasing and sustaining growth of traffic and engagement on their social channels, and raising awareness among new audiences who they knew were going to love the pub’s transformation.
Our solution
To create excitement for the relaunch of the Roebuck in a hyperlocal market, the content needed to work in conjunction with paid, influencer and community management activity. We collaborated closely with the marketing team at Greene King to develop a suite of inspirational organic content that helped retain new followers brought in through other channels, while simultaneously building up and maintaining an organic following.
Our campaign assets celebrate everything that makes the Roebuck special, showcasing the people who love it, the beautiful venue and its environs, its rich heritage and delicious food and drinks menu, with a particular focus on the ever-popular Sunday roast. To encourage further engagement and motivate people to visit, our social team created a series of gamification and poll assets for the pub’s local audience to interact with while telling its intriguing story through fun trivia.
The results
Our strategy worked. For the first 10 weeks of the campaign, Greene King Instagram followers increased by 43% and Facebook followers increased by 8.5%. Reach on Instagram increased by 60% and engagement is up 10.8%, with figures continuing to rise. Sentiment on posts was overwhelmingly positive, and visitor numbers increased so much that we had to refocus the social content away from the food to the drinks as the pub was struggling to meet demand for table bookings.
We knew that choosing to work with an agency of Sunday’s calibre would allow us to deliver more premium content for the relaunch our landmark pub. It was important that the attention to detail of The Roebuck’s refurbishment was reflected in both our social content and paid media, so Sunday were also commissioned to produce the photography for our ATL launch media campaign. Not only have we achieved the performance we hoped, but they have been a joy to work with too.
Clare Wiggins
Brand Lead, Greene King pubs